Happy Coffee Day! Here is a fun infographic that tries to explain social media in terms of coffee. This is a pretty good pairing since most of us in the social media marketing world are over-caffeinated, coffee addicts.

So how do you optimize your site to ensure you achieve the best possible search ranking possible? Of course, a majority of your success will come from having quality content, but there are a number of other page features that you need to pay attention to as well. Following the tips in this post should get you some pretty solid results.

It used to be that organizations would launch a Facebook page, invite some friends, post a little bit, and see organic growth. That was back before Facebook went public. Their main interest was building a user base, and monetizing their user base was secondary. When the user base got into the hundreds of millions and the next logical step was an IPO, Facebook needed to show revenue. And their ad platform has been rather effective in doing so.

OK kids, the day we have all been dreading for month is almost upon us. Next Monday, July 1st is the day that Google Reader is no longer. There are a number of potential Google Reader replacements that will be coming out over the next few weeks. AOL, Digg and even Facebook (maybe) are all […]

I know how hard you all fought for your advertising budgets. You deserve an agency that will help you get the most out of those precious ad dollars. With a little due diligence up front, you should be able to find the right partner.

According to this interesting infographic , social media and mobile devices have become a way of life for many of us. Status updates, emails, tweets and texts have all become about as natural as speaking (for some, more natural).

If your brand or agency still has your social advertisers and managers siloed, it may be time to think about knocking that wall down. Their (and your) social media advertising success relies on very strong inter-team lines of communication and participation.

Online shopping is about to get crazy, and in light of this morning’s wide-spread Target voucher scam, I thought I would share this helpful infographic. Some of the stats may be a bit dated, but there is some solid, common sense advice for both merchants and consumers at the bottom of the graphic.

Companies of all sizes and in just about every industry are desperate to figure out social media and find ways that they can stand out from the ever-growing glut of social brands competing for the same news feeds and followers. Building a close relationship between your public relations and social media teams may be that advantage your company needs.

Here is an interesting infographic from TopCollegesOnline.org that ranks the top colleges and universities on a few of the top social networks and gives a few crazy stats that put the social activity of the top dogs into perspective.

Here is an interesting infographic I found from BrandYourself, a personal search optimization service that shows the importance of controlling the information that appears when someone Googles your name and how to do so.

This research is interesting because, although many social media communities and friendships are becoming more and more interest-based, Facebook is still a bit different. Since its launch, people have used Facebook to reconnect with old classmates, friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc. Many of these people that we reconnect with have developed political views long since we last spoke to them.

Atari celebrated their 40th birthday this week (specifically, on June 27th) and to commemorate the milestone, the video game maker offered up new games, Facebook giveaways and a little digital marketing geek porn, I mean, an infographic.

LinkedIn recently started allowing company page admins to target page status updates to specific users. The targeted updates show in only the LinkedIn homepages of the targeted groups but still show up on your company page for all users to see.

Most alarming here to me is the drop-off in corporate blogging. only 23% of the Fortune 500 companies maintain a blog. In this age of content sharing, blogging is a critical online activity for all B2B companies and most B2C.

Here is an interesting infographic that explores various opinions on social media usage in the workplace. The graphic includes stats reported in the report “The Rise of Social Media for Professional & Personal Use” by the staffing agency, Kelly Services.

I am sure you have seen them in your Facebook news feed or on Pinterest- Images with inspirational or funny quotes written on them. People love this type of image and they usually tend to rack up the high like, share, comment and repin totals.

So how does the average Facebook or Pinterest user create such an image? It’s actually really simple. You can create one in about five minutes and don’t even need Photoshop.

The old cliché “Content is King” has never been more true in the digital marketing world. New, fresh, sharable website content not only builds your brand and generates potential leads, but it also keeps your consumers engaged and connected to your brand.

Generating your content is tough, but once you come up with the killer blog post or case study, how do you let people know about it?

It’s actually easier than you think, providing you are willing to invest a bit in your efforts. Without a doubt, with all the noise and competition on Facebook these days, a combination of incentivizing likes and advertising the offer are the best way to build a quick following.

For years, admins have been stuck with whatever page name they selected when they created the page. They have had to make-do with misspelled business names, name changes, etc since Facebook gave them no way to edit the page name.

Page owners rejoice! Now you can be liberated from your erroneous page names.

The marriage of television and web is becoming closer and more integrated by the day. Second screen marketing is an excellent tool for anyone, network or brand, that wants to extend the life of their production and get a bit more bang for their investment. By bringing your viewers online, you open up all kinds of new avenues on which you can market to the viewer well after the event, show, video or ad is over.

Many people who use Facebook for personal and work reasons struggle to find the balance between sharing somewhat personal info with friends and sharing with the world. Creating and maintaining a separate page is a boatload of work and, depending on the size of your following, may not be worth it.

In the past, you pretty much had to make the decision- do I make my life public? or do I just shut out everyone I don’t actually know? Most people elected to keep their friend list to those individuals that were close friends and thus, they were not able to enjoy some of the business benefits of growing your network and personally branding yourself.

Well, probably not, but it may save you an embarrassing online moment or two tonight.

The Holiday Party Sobriety Test app (from the makers of the Firefox plug-in social sobriety test), runs the user through a series of motor skill tests and then warns you if you are too drunk to be using social media.

A few months ago, Facebook enabled subscriptions for personal profiles. Subscribers only see what you make ‘public’ on your Facebook profile. Much like the anyone you put on your restricted list, subscribers never see any posts or wall items that you send only to friends.

The point of subscriptions is to keep popular individuals from having to create a brand page for themselves. So far, Journalists and Celebrities have really taken to the new subscription model.

This week, Facebook released the ‘subscribe’ button for websites. This button works like many of its social button predecessors, and allows you to subscribe to an individual’s public feed without having to leave the person’s site.

Throughout my years in the digital marketing world, I have found that the best approach to creating a successful Facebook engagement is when you combine engaging page or app content with creative, targeted advertising. Content is the most important element of your campaign, but almost equally important is identifying who your most likely audience is and marketing your page or app to them.

Say you wanted to leave messages on the walls of five of your Facebook friend’s walls but you don’t want all of the posts to appear on your wall as recent activity for all to see. Well, in the past you had to remove each post on your wall individually, now you can hide all posts for similar activities.

Imagine you just bought a new Jeep Wrangler and took your three best friends out for an inaugural spin in the new wheels. You stop and snap a picture of your three amigos in the Jeep. You then decide you want to show the world your new vehicle and post it to Facebook.

Naturally, you would tag your friends in the photo when you upload it, but now you can tag more.

In what surely was no coincidence, The Onion, the very popular news parody site, released their official iPhone/iPad app on April Fools Day. The new app allows you to read the fake news reports and videos that you have come to know and love without leaving the app. There is also some handy share features […]

My past life was in PR. In my world, the conventional wisdom was always that all bad news should be released at 4pm on a Friday afternoon. You do this to ensure it appears in the Saturday news when no one is paying attention. You never sent anything of value out over the weekend with […]

Autism Speaks is working on a campaign to promote autism awareness that integrates digital and traditional marketing pretty well.

The Light it up Blue campaign encourages people to show their blue on April 1st and 2nd. Their microsite gives all the details about what you can do to help offline (wear blue, host an event, change you lightbulbs to blue, etc) and online (place a banner on your site, blog/tweet about autism, change your Facebook avatar and/or status to reflect the effort, etc).

Update 2/23/11: According to TechCrunch, Breakup Notifier was shutdown by Facebook today. The app had collected 3.6 million users in the 2ish days it was active. Original Post 2/21/11: Love-seekers and gossipers: Do I have an app for you! I just read about Breakup Notifier, which has the most self-explanatory name in app history, in […]

First Lady Michelle Obama revealed Wednesday on the Today Show, that her daughters (ages 9 and 12) are too young for Facebook and that the social networking site was “not something they need.” I never thought much about teens on Facebook, but this story got me wondering; How young is too young for social networking? […]

Last month, Billboard launched a new way to measure music popularity- a chart based on social media activity. The Social 50‘s rankings reflect social media statistics like new weekly artist page likes and views, new followers, song streaming, etc. on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, MySpace and iLike. The Social 50‘s formula and data are provided to […]

If you are a passive Facebooker and regularly post photos that you would prefer only be viewable for a period of time, you will soon be in luck. German Company X-Pire is set to release its new photo expiration software sometime this week. Basically, before you post an image to Facebook or Flickr, you drag […]

Facebook announced yesterday that they are partnering with the AMBER Alert Program by creating 53 new ‘fan’ pages (Each US State, PR, DC and the US Virgin Islands) that issue bulletins for their respective territories. For anyone that doesn’t know, the AMBER Alert Program is a coordinated effort between a number of Local, State and […]

Among the many changes Facebook has made with their new profile layout introduction, you now have a row of photos that appear at the top of your profile just under the info blurb and above your wall. These are randomly generated as soon as you convert to the new profile based on photos that you are tagged in (yours or someone else’s).

Mashable just reported that Facebook has released the new profile layout a bit ealier than expected. They were supposed to start offering it tomorrow. The most obvious changes are the inclusion of some of your info items and tagged photos at the top of your profile and what used to be your tabs are now […]

I just stumbled across this new study that claims that women stress more than men about what they will post on Facebook (69% to 39%). There are also a few other interesting stats regarding the relationship between stress levels and social media included. This seems fairly accurate from what I have observed among friends. What […]

Social media is, and should be, social. No doubt about it. If you are a broadcaster and fail to listen and engage, you will have a lonely social media existence. That being said, when posting to your various social accounts you should always question what you are posting being mindful of who could be viewing […]

Big News: A major step has been made in the eradication of the greatest social embarrassment since drunk dialing! The folks over at urlesque have come across a very interesting new Firefox plug-in that doesn’t allow you to post on Social Media unless you pass a sobriety test. You set the times that you are […]

I am a political junkie. I spent the first 10 years of my professional career working on political campaigns and am pretty sure it will never be completely cleansed out of my system. For me, social media has completely changed the way, and speed, in which I receive my election night news. I have sat […]

Note: This is the first in a series of quick Facebook tips for brands that will be posted periodically. Facebook tagging is a great way to expand your network. You can tag friends and other pages in your status updates, pictures, notes, videos, etc. I highly recommend a healthy amount of tagging because your post […]

Now, with Google’s almost daily product expansion, the emergence of digital PR and a number of new deals between the various search engines and social media platforms, optimizing everything that you create digitally has become a critical step in getting your message out and your voice heard.

In the early days of social media (just a few years ago), the amount of followers, friends or fans someone had was the only way to measure their influence over their social media network. Over time, those who were not inclined to embrace the ‘social’ part of social media found ways to boost their counts without really putting in the hard work that it takes to grow a loyal and attentive following. The practice of ‘hoarding’ or ‘collecting’ quickly made follower counts relatively meaningless. So the question became- How do you truly measure your social media influence?